Tapping the Source

After watching the TV series Chance and finding it somewhat out of the ordinary, I was curious what kind of books the author (and the show's executive producer) wrote. Tapping the Source is mostly pretty ordinary though for the most part quite engaging.

In a culture that has lost its values, the one value that prevails is loyalty to one's friends and lovers and the courage to live up to the resultant responsibilities. Ike needs to pay his debt to Ellen, Preston eventually pays his debt to Ike, and even Hound Adams, who preaches the value of rejecting all conventions and thinking for oneself (which in practice turns out to be indistinguishable from selfishness and thrill seeking) demonstrates loyalty at times. Among the values that make show more it all the way through the novel unresolved are brother-sister incest and sexual fidelity.

How the culture lost its values in the first place isn't clear but we believe Hound Adams when he tells us it's bad parenting (Ike's mother deserted him--he never knew his father) and people just following along without thinking for themselves. Every major character in this story is estranged from his family and most are runaways adrift in the freedom that is Huntington Beach.

This is ultimately a morality tale, as is Chance. The good are flawed and get caught up in evil or in despair. How did the evil get to be evil? Some weren't (morally) strong enough to resist. Drugs helped them not resist. Others just had too much money. Or maybe their characters aren't written in sufficient detail for them to be complex human beings.

Because murder by itself isn't evil enough, we need to upgrade it to satanic ritual murder (performed by and for the wealthy, of course) to get the reader's respect, but this reader found it kind of silly, not to mention a cliche I'd though we'd left in the 90s. That, and the perfectly timed arrival of Preston giving his life and saving the day are the story's chief failings.

Still, there are characters and relationships that remain with me long after I finished reading. Just as in Chance. show less

Not a horrible novel by any stretch of the imagination, but not a great one either.

I'll be the first to reveal I know nothing about biker culture, surf culture, or drug culture, other than what I've read in books or seen on TV—in other words, likely highly stylized and sensationalized.

That being said, the author allowed easy access into all three of those worlds with a clean, sharp, well-observed writing style.

That being said, there's not a single likable character in this book, which is okay if the author can make them spellbinding enough to never want to look away. Nunn's characters are interesting, and they have depth, but my god, they do go on. If I had to get through one more of Hound's philosophical "brah" monologues, I may have show more set the book down.

But the thing that ruined it for me, to be quite honest, was the big event toward the end. You'll know it when you read it. It just struck me, after a very set-firmly-in-reality tone throughout, to take a turn into a fantastical Hollywood blockbuster sequence toward the end that really was unnecessary.

Overall, glad I read it, but I don't think I'll come back to Nunn's books anytime soon. show less

Skinny sad sack Ike Tucker, not yet 19 years old, takes the Greyhound bus nearly eight hours to Huntington Beach, Calif., to search for his wild runaway sister Ellen, who ran away a year ago. All he has is a crumpled piece of paper with three names and a garbled account of a trip his sister took with those three men to Mexico. Thus, a young man who has lived nowhere but a tiny desert town discovers inner strength and a working knowledge of the ways of the world — including the underworld and the shadowy world of bikers, runaways, and surfer punks.

Not knowing anyone in Huntington Beach when he arrives, Ike nonetheless manages to gradually piece together clues to Ellen’s fate. In the meantime, Ike tries to determine who he can trust show more — and who he cannot. After a leisurely start, in which author Kem Nunn introduces Ike — and us newbies who are reading Tapping the Source — to the world of surfing, the novel, a National Book Award finalist, turns into a gripping page-turner with more twists and turns than the Pacific Coast highway. To reveal more would be to ruin this five-star book. However, be sure to ride this wave. show less

I picked this up for the simple reason that it was set in Huntington Beach, CA. I've lived in HB for 40 years and skimming it took me back to about the time I moved here.

Ike Tucker was raised in San Arco by his grandmother and uncle. His father had abandoned him and his older sister Ellen, and later his mother ran off with another man. Two years back Ellen had left with a guy too. San Arco was a dry, dusty desert town with nothing to give anyone reason to go there or stay there.

Things changed for Ike when a guy, about Ike's age, drove up looking for Ellen's brother. He was dressed in nice clothes and drove a white Camaro. Ellen had told him her brother was a Harley rider and knew all about motorcycles.

The guy had come to tell Ike that show more his sister had been in Huntington Beach, had gone to Mexico with a couple of guys and never returned. The guy was a bit disappointed to find that Ellen's brother was not a Hell raising biker that could ride down and make life miserable for the guys and find Ellen. He did leave Ike with a scrap of paper and three names...the names of the guys Ellen had been with.

Ike decided he needed to go down to Huntington Beach and find his sister. He had never really been out of San Arco and wasn't sure what he would find. He had enough money for a bus ticket and to rent a place to stay.

Arriving there he found sun, surf, golden tanned surfers and sun-bleached blonde chicks. He also found the dark side of Huntington Beach; drugs, parties that could go on endlessly fueled by drugs, booze and sex. Also the violence that could erupt between surfers and bikers, or surfers when jockeying for prime territory on the waves. He also found that it wasn't going to be a simple thing of asking questions and getting answers.

The book is a combination of coming-of-age, surfing and the beach scene, and noir mystery. At times the writing is a bit wordy, but the author paints the scenes so that you can feel the sun or the nighttime, the salt in the air, the mood of the characters. He gives you written cues that trigger the images in your mind. He also weaves a complicated tale with a number of threads to be untangled to see the solution.

I found that this is the first in a trilogy written by Nunn. Also that Nunn was a Southern California guy who surfed and had the knowledge, which I think made the atmosphere palpable while reading. show less

Word comes to Ike Turner that his runaway sister, Ellen, had spent time in Huntington Beach before disappearing again. He goes there to find her associates and discovers that they’re surfers and they rule the pier with a violent grip. When they’re not surfing, there’s drugs, home-made porn and maybe even a little murder. Ike knows he’ll never have the truth about Ellen unless he becomes one of them but picking up a board and entering the water is only the beginning. Soon Ike must make a choice, to find out what happened to Ellen or to save what’s left of himself.

According to its back cover, this book is the “inspiration” behind the movie Point Break. There must have been a lot of script rewrites because, to be honest, I show more couldn’t recognize anything. If you read Tapping the Source, read it for what it is. It’s very dark in tone, very gritty, very hardboiled – except for the surfing passages which can be beautiful. I believe Nunn's work has been called 'surf noir' and that's pretty accurate. I do enjoy a good hardboiled tale, but I didn’t enjoy much of this. I can’t really recommend it. show less

A gripping, dark, moody, atmospheric, suspenseful story. It's my kind of mystery in that, on review, not a whole lot happened, and yet it is an existential page-turner. As with many mysteries, the "resolution" is something less than the build-up. I'd always heard this was a classic and was moved to read it after seeing Nunn's name on Sons of Anarchy. I would definitely read more of his (and I see there's a new one out).

A coming of age tale set against the mystery of a disappearance in the surfing community of Huntington Beach. Self confessed hick, Ike Tucker learns that his sister has gone missing under suspicious circumstances so leaves his small-town desert home to see if he can find out what happened. He takes up surfing to try and infiltrate the group of those he believes responsible and falls under the wing of a disillusioned former partner of the leader of the gang. As the novel progresses it details Ike's descent into the darker life of sex and drugs and losing the focus for his search. Only the forced ending lets this book down but it's still a very good read. Recommended for any hard-boiled mystery fans out there.